Blogger's Family Addresses Energy Crisis with Vanilla and Caramel Toffee Crunch!

Amidst all the breathless huffing about gasoline prices by the news media and politicians, the workings of the free market system are adroitly addressing the problem via the mechanism of price. The high price of crude oil has led the world's oil exploration companies to go on a drilling binge resulting in a shortage of drilling equipment. Consumers on the other hand are reassessing their use of gasoline at the margin given the sting of high prices. For example, over the previous two weekends, this blogger's family chose to forgo planned roadtrips that would have consumed about 2.5 tanks of gasoline, or about $100. Not alot of money, but certainly a relevant amount at the margin.

In lieu, we stayed home and took advantage of another price incentive afforded us by our wonderful free market system...we ate lots of ice cream. There is a vicious price war raging in the ice cream business driving prices on the leading premium brands down to ridiculous levels. We picked up several pints of Dreamery for $0.99 each while Haagen Dazs went for $2.00 a pint at our local supermarket (in NY no less where everything is expensive). Prices were so good that we invited all the kids in the neighborhood, many of whom were also home because their parents cancelled trips, over for an ice cream party. So while the media and our esteemed sausage-factory workers urge Americans to "sacrifice" to address the "energy crisis", normal people are redrawing their own utility functions and engaging in substitution just like basic economics would lead us to excpect. I doubt any of the kids in our neighborhood felt they were sacrificing, as their lost utility from decreased road travel consumption was offset by the increased utility from more ice cream consumption.